‘When we drink alcohol, we are borrowing happiness from tomorrow” has always felt a particularly comforting quote whenever I’m on the horns of an especially awful hangover. It is also one that, until a shamefully short time ago, I attributed to Albert Einstein, because it turns out it’s apparently enough for me just to see a quote in cursive text overlaying a black-and-white photo of a famous person for me to believe it was said by them. Deeply embarrassing. I’ve also seen it recounted by James Corden, so who knows at this point? Einstein, Corden’s mate Jez … who’s to say?
Anyway, now that summer is over, most of us are left feeling that most of the year’s drinking is safely out of the way. Autumn is the hangover of the calendar year. Spring is the pre-drinks, summer the big blow-out and winter is the enormous, restorative takeaway. And when I think about hangovers, I often think of the bloody mary. It’s one of those drinks whose origins are shrouded in mystery, but the most commonly received wisdom is that it was created by Fernand Petiot in the 1920s, when he was working at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris (which, at the time, was simply called the New York Bar).
